Texas Wildfires

According to the Texas Forest Service, March 2011 was the state's driest March on record, leaving it in extreme drought and fueling recent wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of homes and burned more than one million acres over the past two weeks. High winds have been driving some fires eastward, closer to the densely populated Dallas-Fort Worth area. Governor Rick Perry has asked President Barack Obama for federal disaster funding, with the cost of fighting the fires estimated to be $2 million per day, supporting nearly 2,000 personnel across the state. Gathered here are recent images of the wildfires across Texas and the efforts being made to combat them.

The Texas Forest Service undertook controlled burns on Sunday, April 17, 2011 to get rid of fuel on the mountains around McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains of West Texas. Here, Black Mountain is burning. The Hobby-Eberly Telescope dome is at right.#

A bull tries to escape a running wildfire on April 19, 2011 in Graford, Texas. Dozens of area homes have been destroyed in the wildfires that have been fueled by dry conditions, high winds, and low humidity.#

New wildfires keep starting up near Possum Kingdom Lake where homes have been destroyed in the recreational area about 70 miles west of Fort Worth, Texas on April 19, 2011. The fire is the fifth in Texas to have burned at least 100,000 acres in the past two weeks.#

Kent Hayden looks of the the charred remains of his parents garage and was what was a fully restored antique Jaguar sedan that was destroyed by a wildfire on the west side of Possum Kingdom Lake, Texas, Saturday, April 16, 2011.#

A Texas Forest Service helicopter drops water on a wildfire burning 3 miles northeast of Rotan, Texas on Friday, April 15, 2011. The fire, which started earlier in the week in Kent County and spread into Stonewall, Scurry and Fisher, has consumed more than 50,000 acres, according to fire officials.#

This view of the Rock House wildfire, seen from the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, was shot on the night of April 9, 2011 from the catwalk of the 2.1-meter Otto Struve Telescope dome looking east. The 2.7-meter Harlan J. Smith Telescope is at left.#

This image, taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite, shows wildfires in Texas on April 15, 2011 -- the fires detected by MODIS are marked in red. Most of the fires shown in the image are larger than ten thousand acres, and many have threatened communities.#

Standing in front of a burned out fire truck, volunteer firefighter Steve Forbus pauses while he talks about the firefighter that was killed while trying to escape a wildfire that burned the truck in Eastland County near Gorman, Texas, Saturday, April 16, 2011. "It was a very emotional day for us," said Forbus. Volunteer firefighter Gregory M. Simmons, 51, died as he and other firefighters fled the truck as it was being overrun by flames. Simmons fell in a ditch where the fire caught him, according to an official.#